Cast Into Darkness (39 page)

Melina’s black-and-green aura flared, just as it had when she’d killed Dad. Her spell had cut straight through Dad’s shield. It would tear this one into pieces.
If I don’t try something, I’ll…

Melina sent a swirling ball of dark primal magic straight at Kate.

Dive deep, now.

She dove. Into the jet-black depths that swelled below the surface of her thoughts, into the deep, dark ocean that teemed with antilife. Her connection to primal magic hadn’t changed with the stone’s destruction. The hungry darkness that awaited her felt exactly the same.

She felt the power’s connection to the bowl sitting on Melina’s rock altar, and through it a link to the rest of Melina’s artifacts on her cliff-top Sanctum on the neighboring island. Faintly, she felt a thin draw to every primal magic artifact, everywhere on the planet, including the ones in the Makris arsenal that waited in Lost River with Grayson, waited for the word from her father that would never come.

Kate slipped into the darkness, its viscous ink coating her body and soul. She dimly felt the shock as Melina’s spell ripped her shield away. It grabbed her legs and pulled her under the sand. The rough grains abraded her skin with a scouring pain. A wet, smothering weight crushed her on all sides. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see.

Her lungs seized as she tried to take a breath. No air here, no air anywhere. Just pressure, crushing pressure. She couldn’t move her arms, her hands, her fingers.

I’m going to die. Right here, next to Dad.

One chance. Primal magic. No spellcuffs now, nothing to stop her.

Out
, she willed. She felt herself move, a few inches at first, then fast enough that the sand fell from her like rain. Then she burst from the ground like a rocket into the sky. Air filled her lungs, and she gasped in breath after breath. She landed hard on the sand, a few yards from Melina, every muscle aching.
God, oh God. Please, please give me a minute—

Then the primal magic spiraled out and sought the price for its spell. It reached for Dylan.

No, not Dylan.
Futile to try, but she had to. Touching the power, she told it,
Melina
.
Take Melina
.

The power paused, considered her request. Then swept on toward Dylan, who, seeming to sense the power rushing for him, turned from the guard he fought.

Now or never, no matter the cost, I have to control the magic.
Kate plunged back into the darkness.

Kristof rolled to
avoid a cascade of rocks raining down from the cliff above. Doberman One, black suit covered in blood and muddy sand—stalked up to him, a snarl twisting his face.

“Missed me,
koproskilo
.” Kristof got to his feet and fired off a kinetic punch. The spell took the man in the midsection, throwing his unshielded body across the beach and sending him crashing onto the jagged tide pools of the lower rocks. He lay still, legs twisted unnaturally.

Doberman One had been the last of his foes left standing. Slinging spell after spell, he had destroyed his father’s battered shield and killed Doberman Two. Now all the remained was to dig his father out of his hiding place, and finish the job.

Got to move. Before Melina…

His head snapped around to search for his sister.
Melina lied to me. She planned to make herself a primal magic caster all along, maybe from the first time she’d heard of the stone. What other betrayals is she planning?

He breathed in, then out, letting his heart rate slow to clear the effects of the spell. He didn’t need the help of spell-tweaking to be paranoid about Melina.

He walked to the little cave where his father had taken shelter with the body of Doberman Two. Jacket muddy with blood, a large red slice across his stomach, his father’s chest heaved in and out like an overworked bellows. Kristof scanned the area for anyone else, any other dangers. Nothing. Just the drip of water leaking from the rocks above and the scuttle of a few hermit crabs looking for their next meal.

Shield up, he knelt at his father’s side. He reached down and loosened the man’s shirt collar. His father’s breathing eased.

“Get it over with, my son. Do me the favor of making it quick, the way I did for your grandfather. That’s the point of having family.”

Make it quick. A kinetic knife across the throat. A spike of ice in the back of the head. The feeble pinpricks of red light in his father’s eyes seemed to beg him to make a choice.

He thought about Kate. About lying next to her on the small bed in her little apartment in Ithaca, her feeding him fresh apples and crumbs of cheese, and her laugh as she rehearsed lines from her latest play with him. He thought about a thousand afternoons in the future like that one, afternoons he would probably never have.

He remembered the lessons his father had tried to teach him—strike fast, strike hard. The way he’d beaten Dmitri into a bloody mess after their botched mission, then provoked him into an attack that left his cousin half-dead.

Did he want to be the man his father had raised? The one who would plunge a dagger into his own father’s heart to take his place? Did he want to belong to a family that invited Kate’s father here under a flag of truce, then murdered him?

He hauled his father to his feet. “Come with me.”

Kate struggled as
the primal magic wrapped its inky tendrils around her. She opened her mouth to scream, and darkness filled her throat. She tried to take in another breath, and the blackness sank into her lungs. She pulled against the tarry ropes, and they snapped tighter. The more she resisted, the more she was engulfed by the primal magic’s shadowy doom.

Her heart went pitter-patter, like a rabbit trying frantically to escape a snare. Her breath rasped in her throat. Her vision dimmed—the form of Melina standing over her, of Dylan reaching inside his jacket for a talisman, shielding himself from the power rushing toward him with the same white light she’d used. Then everything began to fade. The sound of the battle, the gulls overhead, the waves on the shore, all muted out. The feel of the grainy sand rubbing into her skin disappeared. She couldn’t even taste the blood in her mouth anymore. Blackness filled everything inside her.

The white light, the counterspell. She had to try it. It had worked before. If she could just move her fingers a little. She tapped out the ginkgo-leaf pattern to the spell and chanted the words as best she could.

The light sprang into being around her, like the sun rising after the longest night. It swept across her stiff body, pushing against the blackness.
Maybe, just maybe…
Then the darkness washed over it like an oil spill, extinguishing it completely, and she felt the magic’s cool contempt, as if to say,
Oh, that thing again
.

The last bit of hope deep inside her went out like the spark of a campfire on a stormy beach. She had nothing left to try.

Kristof marched his
father down the beach to where Melina stood, hands on her hips, watching Kate as she lay on the sand. Kate was curled in ball on her side, eyes closed, fists clenched, shaking.

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. She did it to herself. Fighting the primal magic, trying to control it. She’ll kill herself. I don’t have to lift a damn finger.”

Kristof took a step toward Kate. Melina’s eyes went hot with anger. “Oh no. You’ve interfered quite enough.” She glanced down at their father. “Do your job. Finish him, brother dear.”

“What will you do if I don’t? Make Dmitri your puppet instead?”

“Maybe. At least he’ll shoot from the front.”

He pushed his father down to kneel on the beach. A few yards away, Dylan rolled shaking to his feet, counterspell no longer needed. Victor stood braced against the cliff, Brooke at his side, fending off a pair of his father’s enforcers. Dmitri moaned at Victor’s feet, hands clutching his bleeding stomach.

“Let Kate go,” Kristof said. “You don’t need her.”

“‘You?’ Don’t you mean ‘we’?”

He looked down at his father, crawling toward the amulet Cooper Hamilton had brought as a good faith gesture, blood coloring the dark sand an even darker black. “What do you think?”

“I think someone has to teach you what family means.” Melina glanced down at Kate. His sister’s aura lit up with a black-green fire.

Kate’s breath left
her body with a soft finality. Her lungs burned, aching for one more inhale, one more beautiful whiff of air. Her blood yearned for oxygen, for the vital pulse of life. More, just a little more.

There must be something she could do. The white light Brian had used in the Sanctum had been a clue. Maybe he’d left her another.

The journal. No, no, that hadn’t meant a damn thing. But in his room, when she’d been looking for clues… She’d found that copy of the
Tao te Ching
, the last thing Brian had read.

Why was she thinking of it now? It was a stupid
book
, something Grayson would assign as a way to think about magic, about power.

Yes
. Maybe it was exactly that.

The passage Brian had marked… What had it said?

When two great powers clash

the one that yields

will emerge triumphant.

Brian had known what the stone did all along.

She yielded. Stopped fighting the blackness that suffocated her. Relaxed into the power and gave up.

Its insatiable hunger responded. It reached in and dragged her completely under, its ebony liquid filling her with its essence. Her heart slowed. Her pulse wound down to almost nothing. Her entire body froze. Her thoughts flowed like the dark sea itself, a thick, viscous ooze through her mind. Primal magic flowed around her and through her.

And it welcomed her.

The sea of blackness sprung into glorious life before her as all the shades of darkness revealed themselves to be shades of gray. There were depths in the depths of which she had been unaware. As she looked around at her inner landscape, she realized the power held still and quiet. Its magic no longer flowed in an unending circle above her, its waves no longer crashing on her shore. The intention she’d felt became a presence—one that paid attention to her.

Looming before her like a dark torrent, it waited for her to negotiate. For her to offer it a price, instead of her life.

Melina. Take Melina.

No
. A strong no.

Before it could lash back, she made another proposal.

Kate felt outside herself for all the life that roamed the rocky seashore of the Makris family’s little island. From the thousands of life-forms crawling, running, and flying around her, she made an offer.

A hundred tuna, swimming in a school offshore. It considered, and she thought that somewhere in its vastness it calculated the worth of a hundred tuna versus the effort it had taken to release her from Melina’s spell holding her under the sand.

No
. Too small.

She thought about what else she needed to do, thought about how Dad had negotiated. Then she made another offer, for this spell and another.

A little short
, the feeling came back.

Cut me a deal. This is a long-term relationship.

Primal magic brushed Kate with a light touch of its power. Just enough to acknowledge that the deal had been made.

Kate’s lungs burst open and sweet, sweet air rushed in.

Kristof’s counterspell flared
white against Melina’s black primal magic. Inch by inch, she pushed his shield back until it barely surrounded Kate and himself, their forms overshadowed by the power of her dark art.

He had to come up with another plan. And fast. Before…

Melina’s veil of darkness wiped his counterspell away like ink spilled across virgin-white paper.

His veins were on fire. Every muscle in his body popped and twisted in an agony ten times worse than any he’d suffered in the Pit. His hands clawed at the sand, looking for anything he could grab, throw at her, anything.

“What happened to you, Kristof? Why didn’t you trust me to know what was good for us both?”

Through a haze of pain, Kristof saw Melina standing over him, arms outstretched, green-black fire arching down into him. The pain increased, his blood boiling in his veins, his skin combusting. In a moment there would be nothing left of him but smoking bone on the shores of the warm sea, with his sister’s burning hands bearing witness.

Then, from behind him, hair blazing in the noonday sun, Kate stood and reached into the stream of power. She pushed its greenish darkness back into Melina. The power welled up and imploded, filling Melina with a verdant miasma that permeated her skin, her eyes, her hair. She screamed and screamed again, her body convulsing. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she dropped limp on the sand.

The pain racking him ended. He could breathe. He could swallow.

The magic left Melina, searching for its price. And found it. His father tumbled to the shore, a step away from Cooper Hamilton and the amulet he wanted back so very much.

Kate sat on
the warm sand next to her father. She held his stiffening hand in hers, her thumb tracing the lines of his palm. She should close his eyes or something. Wasn’t that what people did?

“Kate.” Kristof. He was standing behind her. She felt his life force, the trillions of cells in his body that made him
him
—a side effect, she supposed, of her deal with primal magic. Kate sensed Melina’s life force, as well, along with Melina’s own connection to primal magic. Her spell had suppressed that connection, not killed her.
What does it say about me that I wish it had?

“We have to talk.” Kristof’s voice was gentle.

Victor knelt on the other side of her father’s body. His face had a cut across it, and he reached up to wipe the blood away. “Go,” he growled with a glare up at Kristof. “I’ll take care of him.”